Mirror
by Oddfellow
Summary: River wishes she looked more like her mother ... Oneshot


Disclaimer: I'm sure there are a lot of people who wouldn't mind owning Inara—and I'm one of them :) However, I'm merely left to my lonely, pathetic dreams ... which means I don't own River, either. Pre BDM.

Mirror

Her skull face grinned lopsidedly back at her from yet another broken mirror. Except this time, she thought sadly, it was the reflection that was broken, not the glass. Still, it amounted to the same thing. She tilted her head to the side, letting hair fall over her nose and mouth, making it ruffle with each breath she took. She stuck her tongue out, stretched her mouth wide, and pulled her eyelids up, enjoying her reflection's new, warped face. Making herself grotesque was so endlessly fascinating and so damn _easy_ since (_not much left to do_) but she oughtn't to think of that here. She glanced down at the cosmetics still laid out in front of the mirror. Making herself beautiful, on the other hand, was almost too hard to be worth the trouble.

Inara made it seem easy, her hands so sure, her brushstrokes so graceful that of course it was easy to make herself that much more stunning than she already was. Beauty was far too unfair, River reflected, trailing her hands over the brushes. It mattered too much and too many people looked strange when they tried it. Inara never looked strange; even on the Rim she made her loveliness seemed effortless.

Her hands balled into fists and she looked away from the mirror, shutting her eyes against the soft light of the shuttle. She ought to look more like her mother, but all she had was a broken skull face and hands to cover it with.

She opened her eyes slowly and reached for a brush. She remembered how to do this in the way she remembered all her lessons, in the same greedy, knowledge-hungry manner she had devoured any knowledge that had come her way. Blacken lashes, darken brows, color cheeks. A portrait of her Core-self. She saved her lips for last, reddening them until they were the color of the silken hangings in Inara's passion-scorched shuttle, the color that Jayne looked best in, the color that turned her mouth into a grinning gash, a wound on her face, a counterpoint to the bruises of her eyes. The color that made her look as though a Reaver had given her a kiss.

"River?" River put down the brush at the sound of Inara's startled voice. Wayward child caught with her fingers in the cookie jar when she knew better. "Are you alright, sweetie?"

"I broke your mirror," River told her, conscious of her new-old still-wrong Core face. She had eaten too many, and now the cookies were making her feel slightly sick. "The reflection didn't fit."

Inara's concerned face appeared in the glass next to River's. "The mirror's fine, River," she said, bewildered. "You didn't break anything."

River shook her head. Their faces were inches apart, one next to the other, perfect copies staring back out at them, and River wished with a heart-splitting pang that her face belonged there beside Inara's. She could remember a time when it _would have_, when the Reaver-kiss red had belonged on her mouth, when her hair was soft and clean, when her skin was as fragrant as the jasmine scent of Inara, when she was a rich little Core girl and far too proud and _sane_.

She really ought to be more like her mother.

Inara had all the beauty and sophistication of the Core and all the stubbornness strength of the Rim, but her kindness, that inescapable kindness, wasn't Core or Rim. Both? Maybe. Neither. Maybe. Just a human factor that couldn't be calculated or quantified or put in its place, and it made River ache with relief. She could take advantage of it, be as hungry for that kindness as she wanted, and Inara would give it to her. Lovely, proud Inara who knew love inside out and was still as baffled by it as the rest of them.

But their faces were too different to fit in the same mirror.

Inara's hand reached out, smoothing River's hair. "Are you feeling alright? Would you like me to get your brother?" she asked softly.

River shook her head again. "Kaylee."

"Ah." Inara's had kept stroking her hair, and River could feel her indecisiveness, her cleverly concealed worry, her desire to make River feel better even when she didn't know what the _hell_ was going on in River's head. And River remembered her logic then; her broken reflection had already shattered the mirror, so really, they didn't have to fit because they couldn't see themselves anymore, not truly, not well enough to see that they were too similar to be the same. So River put her head on Inara's shoulder, closed her eyes, and pretended she looked exactly like her mother.

_fin_

A/N: I apologize if this makes no sense whatsoever. My one flimsy defense is that River is nuts. Thanks for reading and reviews welcome as always!


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